Draft-Busting Event
On 4 November VAP hosted a draught-busting event.
Ruth Segal gave a brilliant presentation on where most of our home heat goes (through the roof, along with the fuel bills), and the best and most cost-effective ways to stop it (thick loft insulation, double glazing, plug the gaps in your floor boards and skirting boards, and hang lined curtains across windows and doors).
Nick Rouse explained how to deal with draughty sash windows at very low cost, by installing specially adapted parting and staff beads.
Barry Taplin described how an energy performance assessment can help to improve your home’s energy efficiency rating and reduce environmental impact. He also advised the audience to invest in a home energy monitor and check out how much your individual electrical appliances use. You’d be amazed by how much electricity is used by equipment on stand-by – not a lot per day, but add it up over ten years.
Oliver St John explained about the need to balance draught elimination with ventilation to minimise condensation which causes black mould and explained that a cheap hygrometer instrument can be used as a safe-guard measure.
You can download the presentation from here and see Barry's top three tips. Happy draught-busting!
Presentation from the event
Barry Taplin's Top Three Tips of the Evening
Buy an Energy Monitor or borrow from a local Library.
- Sounds boring but really does focus the mind on areas of cost and electric usage that you don’t think about if you don’t actually see the effect with your own eyes.
- Use your Immersion just once a day to heat your water. If you heat your water up once in the morning and once before evening... you may find that there is plenty of hot water still in the tank from the mornings heating and if you have a dual electric meter (Economy 7) all your water will be heated at a vastly reduced rate over night. Just check to see if it works for you..
- Consider changing your power supplier. On Dec 1st Scottish & Southern Energy are putting their prices up an average of 9.4%... huge increase ! and those in the know are predicting the other big 6 will follow within months or possible weeks..... now is the time to look for fixed longer term cheap deals.
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